


Bad Penny

by Tabithian



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-25
Updated: 2016-04-25
Packaged: 2018-06-04 09:16:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6651955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabithian/pseuds/Tabithian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a running joke aboard the <i>Mother of Invention</i> about Agent Georgia. </p><p>No, not the one with the jetpack. The other one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bad Penny

**Author's Note:**

> I've been thinking about these two for a while now. *hands*

There's a running joke aboard the _Mother of Invention_ about Agent Georgia.

No, not the one with the jetpack. The other one.

********

“Hey, Utah,” Georgia says, this stupid smile on his face when he sees Utah. “Long time no see.”

Georgia is connected to more machines and equipment than Utah can name, not that it means much given the extent of his medical knowledge. 

Still.

It's.

Georgia should be a little concerned about things, considering, but.

This is _Georgia_.

Utah rolls his eyes and reaches out to take Georgia's hand not hooked up to an IV and turns it over. Georgia frowns, but doesn't say a damn thing as Utah presses that stupid penny of his into the palm of his hand.

“Hey, Georgia,” Utah says. “I found your lucky penny.”

It's been a few weeks since Georgia reappeared out of nowhere, and he's been in and out the whole time, and Utah's not sure he remembers what happened.

There are _concerns_ , about Georgia. Reasons he's being kept for observation until they're sure there aren't any...complications.

They're the same concerns, potential complications they'd had after Utah's failed equipment test because Georgia was drifting through space for a while, and his suit was failing at the end.

Georgia's smile goes softer at the edges as he looks at the pitted and scratched circle of copper in his hand.

“Cool,” Georgia says, fingers curling over it.

********

Project Freelancer takes away Utah's name and gives him a code name in exchange for a place he's never heard of and will probably never see.

They give him a set of power armor and assign him to a team that runs training exercise after training exercise after training exercise.

He watches the roster change, sees Freelancers come and go.

Up the ladder to Beta and Alpha teams or dropped down the ranks, shuffled off to a simulation base somewhere to keep the sim troopers in line, or back into service with UNSC forces.

A few – more than a few – never make it back home.

Killed in one of the training exercises or something else, it's the same in the end.

It's how he meets Georgia, a Freelancer in green and pink who's been bounced from team to team and carries a carries a battered penny with him he insists is lucky. Fucking keeps on insisting it's lucky even after telling Utah some of the shit he's survived in his life, before and after joining Freelancer.

The way Georgia's former teammates treat him like some kind of jinx.

“Seriously, though,” Georgia tells him one night, ice pack resting on his knee. “This thing has kept me alive this long, it's got to be lucky, right?”

Utah looks at him, beat to hell and limping after being tossed around in a training match with members of Beta, and still arguing the merits of that goddamned penny.

They're friends, he thinks, or the closest thing to it you can get to someone in Freelancer.

Georgia's a decent soldier with an odd sort of luck, if you could call it that.

He's survived things that should have killed him time and time again, and hell if Utah knows why.

“Sure,” Utah says, because somehow Georgia's lasted longer than anyone else on the team aside from Utah, and that must mean something. “Why not.”

********

The reason behind the joke about Georgia and jetpacks? The one everyone takes to telling rookies to mess with them?

Utah isn't there when it happens.

He's being poked and prodded and all but interrogated because his armor enhancement failed spectacularly and his brain was deprived of oxygen for a worrying length of time.

He's not there when it happens, but he hears about it.

Finds out there's no way to find Georgia unless his recovery beacon goes off, and given the situation, there's only one reason it would.

********

It's sheer coincidence Utah's assigned to the station where Georgia pops up again. Just smacks right up against the side of the station like a bug on a windshield.

********

“Ha, told you it was lucky,” Georgia says. “You never believed me.”

Utah stares at Georgia, who looks so fucking small out of his armor and surrounded by medical equipment.

Thinks about the odds stacked against him in surviving, making it to the station Utah was assigned to. How fucking improbable it all is.

Utah's aware, in some small part of his mind that he could get F.I.L.S.S. to do the math for him, if he never wants to sleep again.

“Yeah, well,” Utah shrugs, dropping into the chair beside Georgia's bed and still feeling a little shocky because somehow Georgia is here, _alive_. “You should know everyone's been using this to haze the rookies.”

Project Freelancer doesn't stop for a lost agent, doesn't so much as blink, no. Just dips into the pool of candidates and keeps right on going.

Georgia's eyes go a little wide at that, mouth dropping open in a little 'o' of surprise before he laughs and says, “Cool.”

Because this is Georgia, and he's that kind of idiot, isn't he.

Looking at him, Utah wonders if there isn't something to that fucking penny of his after all.


End file.
